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SEO vs. CRO: Which Should You Focus On?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) vs. Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) has recently been a subject of heated debate. Many businesses ask, “Which one should I invest in?”

Truthfully, there’s no comparison between the two. They’re on the same side of the equation, meaning you cannot have one without the other. Understanding both SEO and CRO is crucial for success in any industry.

So, with that in mind, let’s jump into everything you must know about SEO and CRO.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 101

SEO is crucial if you want to be found in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Think about how often you start your search for the right brand based on Google. Yet only 71% of businesses have a website in 2023, showing how much value the UK’s business community misses out on.

But having a website isn’t enough. Businesses need an SEO-optimised website. You appear in Google SERPs by creating a website and optimising your pages by following Google’s algorithms. Techniques include targeting relevant keywords and acquiring backlinks. Rank higher in SERPs, and you’ll attract more traffic.

SEO is simple to understand as a concept, but executing an impactful SEO strategy is easier said than done because you’re competing against millions of other websites.

 

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) 101

On the other hand, CRO is the process of optimising your website for conversions. In other words, once someone visits your website, your site is set up to encourage action from your visitors.

Different elements you might focus on include landing pages, menu bars and content. Excel in CRO, and your sales-to-visitors ratio will increase.

What does an excellent CRO look like? According to Forbes, an eCommerce website’s average conversion rate ranges from 1.84% to 3.71%. It may not sound significant, but this can have a massive impact on your bottom line over thousands of visitors.

 

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Key differences between SEO and CRO for business growth

SEO and CRO are essential for driving traffic to your website and landing new customers. Although they work in tandem, they have several key differences that mark them out as distinct, including:

  • SEO focuses on increasing traffic quantity and quality.
  • CRO improves the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as contacting your sales team, subscribing to your newsletter, or making a purchase.

In short, SEO is focused on encouraging people to visit your website, whereas CRO’s purpose is engagement.

How SEO and CRO Work Together

SEO and CRO are not the same, but they are interdependent. For example, your SEO may have ranked you on the first page of Google SERPs, but if people land on a low-quality website, they’ll click away.

Likewise, you can have a website geared for conversions, but if your SEO isn’t on-point, nobody will see your brand’s site in the first place. Moreover, Google’s algorithms increasingly account for the on-site user experience for SEO purposes.

Over time, SEO and CRO have become more closely entwined, meaning you can only succeed in one if you succeed in the other.

Why are both SEO and CRO important for business growth?

 

Establishing that both impact business growth is one thing, but why do they combine so well to drive results?

Sites that fail to rank will not result in conversions or business revenue. In contrast, if your plan solely focuses on ranking, you will unlikely acquire the desired results. The key to achieving business growth is to ensure that every element of your site answers the searcher’s query.

Let’s focus on content as a means to drive business growth. Here are three points to consider to generate business growth:

 

  • Create Content to Match Intent—Which content best answers the searcher’s query? Google asks this question every time, but it also includes the caveat that the page must offer the best possible user experience.

  • Optimise Content for Conversions—Strategically telling people what you want them to do turns informative content into converting content. Again, this increases click-through rates and creates action, which Google recognises for SEO purposes.

 

In other words, SEO and CRO optimisations inform each other. Succeeding in one area will enable you to succeed in another area. Moreover, if we examine SEO principles, time-on-page and click-through rates are as important in SEO as in CRO.

How to find the right balance between SEO and CRO


Achieving optimal results means striking the right balance between SEO and CRO. But what does this look like in the field?

 

  • Align Your Goals —Your SEO and CRO goals should complement each other and be aligned with your overall marketing objectives. In other words, they shouldn’t compete; they should collaborate.

  • Keyword Optimisation for CRO – Bring high-converting keywords into your landing pages and other content to deliver synergy between SEO and CRO.

  • Operate on the Data – Data analytics should be at the heart of your online marketing decisions. Don’t separate your SEO and CRO data or examine it in isolation. Combine both to make informed decisions, whether improving the user experience or optimising your landing pages.

  • Make User Experience Your Number One – The user experience is everything. Focus on what makes your business more appealing to users, such as fast loading speeds and persuasive content writing.

  • Test and Repeat —Make A/B testing part of your typical marketing schedule to determine what works and what doesn’t. Likewise, constant testing ensures your website doesn’t get stale and tumble down the rankings.

  • Personalisation —Personalisation is a powerful tool for targeting different customer segments. Tailoring your messaging increases the odds of making an impact on each segment. Combining your personalisation strategies with SEO can also inform landing page optimisation, which will only boost your rankings.

 

As you can see, countless options exist for combining SEO and CRO. It’s less about finding a balance and more about understanding that you cannot have one without the other.

 

Tracking the impact of SEO and CRO


Any marketing campaign requires monitoring to understand whether it’s achieved success. Some examples of both SEO and CRO impacts include:

 

  • Organic traffic
  • Keyword rankings
  • SERP visibility
  • Click-through rate
  • SERP visibility
  • Bounce rate
  • Conversions
  • Website authority

 

Which metrics you focus on must be defined before you launch your campaign. Every marketing effort is different, meaning no two businesses will draw the same line between success and failure.

 

Achieve SEO and CRO Synergy With Tao Digital Marketing

Managing SEO and CRO can be complicated. Even if you understand how both work, running these campaigns takes valuable time and resources away from your business.

Kickstart your next online marketing campaign by working with a team of experts who understand what works for you. We incorporate your goals, expectations and niche to provide the best possible solution. To learn more, contact Tao Digital today.

Lead Generation for Law Firms: Our Tips

Winning a big client who decides to keep your law firm on retainer is the dream. Realistically, most of the UK’s 208,000 law firms must continually generate new business to thrive. Although many firms continue to rely on traditional marketing, the true rewards are online.

According to the latest stats, over a third of clients start their search online before examining any other channel. This is an opportunity, and lead generation is one of the most impactful ways to snag this group.

Want to know how to make lead generation work for you? Let’s dive into everything you need to know about lead generation in the legal trade.

What is lead generation for law firms?

Leads are anyone interested in using your law firm’s services. For example, if you specialise in helping your clients through messy divorces, anyone searching for a divorce lawyer would be a potential lead.

Leads can come from anywhere. They could be someone local Googling for a “business lawyer in Manchester” or someone asking about a “road traffic solicitor in Durham” in a local Facebook group.

Lead generation aims to acquire those leads and get them to choose you as their lawyer. In other words, it’s the business of attracting and selling to clients who can benefit from your services.

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The benefits of lead generation for law firms

Lead generation is viewed as a priority for marketers in every sector. According to one figure, 53% of marketers sent 50% of their total budgets to lead generation, which shows how powerful it is.

So, what’s the benefit of doing this in the legal sector?

 

  • Grow your client base.
  • Increase your conversion rates.
  • Reduce your marketing costs.
  • Turn to precision targeting.
  • Gain a competitive edge.
  • Save time and resources.
  • Build brand awareness.

 

Finally, strong lead generation campaigns can establish yourself as the go-to legal authority in your niche. Whether you help clients with speeding fines or criminal law, lead generation positions you as the number one brand in your playground.

The lead generation process for law firms

Lead generation isn’t about throwing up a few ads and hoping for the best. In the past, this was marketing’s best-kept secret, but times have changed. Today, 61% of marketers claimed generating leads was now their biggest challenge. In fact, legal services have the highest average cost-per-lead of any sector, at around $650, according to analysis from Sopro. 

Most guides treat lead generation as an abstract concept. Let’s consider what it might look like for a solicitor in the field.

 

  1. John is being sued for libel and needs legal advice. He discovered your firm through Google and signed up for a free consultation. This makes John a lead. 
  2. You already know John is interested, but he’s probably taking free consultations with several solicitors. During your call, you learn about his case, which is scheduled for next month. 
  3. Throughout your call, your rep found out he can afford you and lives in the same city. This makes him what’s known as a “qualified lead”, meaning John is worth pursuing. 
  4. Your firm will then “nurture” John as a lead. This could be through personalised offers, discounts, or something else. If successful, John will convert from a lead into a customer.

 

Successful lead generation relies on your marketing and sales team working in tandem to bring in leads and guide them down the sales funnel. The problem is your competitors are also doing the same thing.

How can you ensure that the leads generated are high-quality?

 

Not every lead is worth your time. Just because someone needs legal services doesn’t make them a good lead.


For example, if you’re based in Southampton and someone in Edinburgh has found you, that makes them a low-quality lead because most lawyers aren’t going to travel the length of the UK for a single client.


Here are some simple ways to ensure the leads you’ve generated are worth pursuing:

Increase the Number of Form Fields

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Add more fields to your lead generation forms. Not only does this provide more information, but it also scares away people who aren’t serious about hiring you.

Ask Complex Questions

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Make your lead generation questions more thoughtful. Again, it’s all about separating the serious people from the window shoppers. The last thing you want is to waste your secretary’s time on free consultations that won’t lead anywhere.

Use Focused Targeting

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How you target will determine lead quality every time. Aim for a smaller niche instead of focusing on vanity metrics like web traffic. Always avoid heading for volume because this will only cost you more.

 

Although providing more hurdles to jump through and reducing the number of people you target may seem counterintuitive, it’ll actually increase your success rates while reducing the drag on your resources.

Plus, you might even find a relatively sparse niche and gain a competitive edge!

Generating leads for multiple legal practice areas

Generating leads for multiple legal practice areas is often a point of contention among both marketers and solicitors. However, since law firms may address several areas of law, you’ll need separate lead-generation campaigns for each.

It all begins with your law firm’s website. Since you’ll drive 90% of your traffic here, you need individual landing pages for each practice area. Furthermore, this will likely mean running multiple paid marketing campaigns, including SEO, PPC and social media advertising.

SEO is especially pertinent because growing your brand’s visibility as a whole will support each practice area’s lead-generation campaign. This is where hiring an SEO agency that can build these foundations proves its value.

Ultimately, you must also consider resource allocation if operating in multiple practice areas. Does it make sense to allocate half of your resources to individual libel when most of your business comes from business libel? Of course not, so campaigns must be tailored to your firm.

Measuring the success of law firm lead generation

How do you know if your lead generation campaign has been successful?

Measuring any campaign’s success is critical to optimising future campaigns. Directly attributing new business to your lead generation efforts tells you whether you need to continue with what you’re doing or change.

Follow these tips to measure the success of your lead generation campaign.

 

Graphic on Measuring Lead Gen Success

Focus on the right metrics

Concentrating on core metrics provides actionable insights into what’s working. Here are the top metrics to use:

 

  • Conversion rate
  • Cost per lead
  • Revenue per client
  • Return on Investment (ROI)

 

Set up analytics and tracking

Analytics and tracking tools are essential to working out where your new business is coming from. Without certain tools, you’re entirely blind to your marketing efforts.

Basic tools like Google Analytics will tell you about the performance of your website and its landing pages and offer insights into how your visitors are behaving. In terms of lead generation, you also need conversion tracking tools. Several platforms have native tools, such as Google Ads Conversion Tracking and Facebook Ads Manager. However, all-in-one suites are also available.

 

Use a reliable Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system

CRMs are essential for tracking and managing your leads. Some of the benefits include:

 

  • Tracking interactions.
  • Centralising lead data from each channel.
  • Analysing lead behaviour.

 

Some of the most common CRMs law firms use include HubSpot and Salesforce. Some firms may prefer niche-specific CRMs, though.

 

Launch A/B testing

A/B testing is a technique for measuring lead generation ROI. It involves creating at least two variations of your landing pages, copy, campaigns and more. Each variation is tested against the other to see which performs best.

Constant A/B testing will tell you what works, but it relies on making incremental changes to see which alterations have the most impact. After all, the secret of lead generation is that you’ll never get the best possible results from your first campaign. It’s a long-term process.

 

 

How to generate leads for your law firm

There’s no getting around the fact that lead generation is time- and resource-intensive. Get it right, and you will see your leads increase exponentially. The transformative potential of mastering lead generation is undeniable but requires expertise.

Legal professionals are busy people and may not have the time to learn about and run lead-generation initiatives, and that’s where Tao Digital comes in. In the past, our efforts have led to one law firm increasing its leads by 174%.

If these types of results are what your firm is looking for, reach out to the team today.

Reaching Your Law Firm’s Target Audience Online

Marketing your law firm is essential to your survival in today’s digital world. Currently, the UK’s legal market has seen the number of registered law firms falling, with the Solicitors Regulation Authority counting 9,334 firms in February 2024.

The legal market remains abundant despite the number of operators falling from record highs. Remember, 96% of people said they started their search for legal advice online. Everyone looking up legal advice is a potential lead, but how do you target them?

It’s all about your target audience, and this guide will discuss how to reach them online.

The importance of a target audience

 Your target audience is your people. If you think about all your current and former clients, these are your target audience. Yet even professional marketers often don’t know their target audience. According to HubSpot, just 42% of marketers had basic demographic information for them.

Without that information, you’re flying blind. You’re making assumptions and hoping for the best, which means wasted time and money. So, why should you know your target audience?

 

 

Of course, knowing your target audience is one thing, but targeting them successfully is quite another.

 

What is the typical target audience for a law firm?

Solicitors can serve every adult in the UK. Your law firm’s target audience comprises the likeliest people to become your clients. The easiest way to figure this out is to examine your current client base and find what binds them. Basic demographics include age, education level, income and occupation, but law firms must dig deeper.

According to Spotify, poorly targeted ads waste an estimated $37 billion USD annually. Avoiding wasted marketing pounds means going deeper. Some examples include:

  • Values
  • Pain points
  • Lifestyles
  • Needs

 

Never make assumptions because the target audience for a road traffic lawyer will be very different from a business lawyer serving the needs of companies.

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How to define and segment your law firm’s target audience online

Defining your target audience leads to segmenting that audience. Remember, many law firms operate in multiple practice areas, meaning they may have several target audiences – or segments – to consider.

Here are some tips to begin learning about your target audience.

 

Graphic Discussing Law Firm Retargeting

 

Here are some tips to begin learning about your target audience.

 

 

Analyse your current clients with data analysis

The story is in the data. Solicitors nationwide are embracing technology, with the Law Society Gazette revealing that a quarter of lawyers use generative technology. So why wouldn’t you use data analytics to learn about your target audience?

Focus on your current and past clients and identify their patterns and characteristics. This will give you a benchmark against which to continue your research. Remember, this is an ongoing process because you’re constantly acquiring data.

Moreover, you can do the same thing with your competitors’ audiences to identify gaps in the market.

 

Research the broader legal market

Keep sight of the broader legal market, or you risk not seeing the forest for the trees. Explore the market landscape to spot the trends and opportunities within your practice area.

Keeping up with the market doesn’t require reading dry market research reports. Instead, surveys should be conducted on current and potential clients to learn more about their needs and preferences.

 

Invest in psychographics

Psychographics focus on psychological variables and offer a way to understand the minds and motivations of your target audience. Examples of psychographic metrics include:

 

  • Motivations
  • Values
  • Interests
  • Lifestyles

 

Again, this is where data analytics comes in handy. Acquiring this data helps you craft the targeted marketing messages that compel your audience to act.

 

Segment based on behaviour

Segmentation divides your target audience into different groups. This enables you to target campaigns based on the characteristics of groups within your target audience.

Tracking what your target audience does provides clues as to what’s likely to resonate with them. Some examples of behavioural metrics to track include:

 

  • Time spent on your website.
  • Number of times visiting your website.
  • Pages clicked on.
  • Downloads.
  • Newsletter opens/clicks.

 

Analysing your audience’s behaviour can help you make better choices regarding every aspect of your marketing campaign.

 

Continue gathering and analysing

No person was the same ten years ago as they are today. The same goes for your audience. What worked a few years ago isn’t necessarily going to work now.

Law firms must continually analyse their clients and activity across all their marketing channels. This enables them to spot any client changes and adjust accordingly.

 

Creating audience personas for your law firm

Did you know that 44% of marketers used audience personas in their business? But what are audience personas?

Your target audience defines a group of people, whereas audience personas zoom into individual members of that audience. Personas drill down to define what an ideal looks like within the various segments of your target audience, making them powerful tools.

Here’s a short guide for building out an audience persona:

 

  1. Begin With Demographics – The foundation of any audience persona is the demographics. Understanding this provides the high-level data needed to continue.
  2. Know Their Pain Points – The next step is to know their pain points. In other words, what’s the problem they need you to solve, and what do they expect from you?
  3. Research the Noise – Noise in the marketplace stops them from acting. This is where analysing your competitors comes in useful. Understanding what others say to influence your target audience helps you find the gaps to undermine these efforts and win the client.
  4. The “Why”—Why should they hire your firm? Conceptualise your unique selling points to help understand why someone would hire you over your competitors. Every law firm should know this because it’s what makes you special. Without those points, you’re just another law firm.
  5. Finish With Emotions – People don’t always purchase based on cold, hard truths. They make them based on emotions. When creating a client persona, define the journey of working with you. Moreover, map out the emotions of that persona in both win and lose scenarios. This will help you customise your marketing messaging.

 

Companies worldwide spend billions of pounds on finding their target audience and building audience personas in every industry. But you don’t need to cripple your cash flow to find your target audience and boost your marketing success rates.

At Tao Digital, we specialise in helping the UK’s lawyers branch out online and achieve their goals. In one case study, we collaborated with one firm and they experienced a 174% increase in leads.

If you need a partner who can find your target audience and win them over to your brand, contact the team today.

 

 

 

Link Building for Law Firms: How it Works

Link building is a staple of law firm SEO. Successful link-building campaigns can elevate your brand to the top of Google’s search results for the most lucrative keywords.

For example, the first Google result holds a 28.5% click-through rate. Understandably, reaching these top spots can deliver more eyes and business for your law firm.

So, how do you run a successful link-building campaign?

The purpose of link building for law firms

Link building means getting other websites to insert links pointing to your content. It’s a critical signal Google looks for. It is thought, based on data through many studies, that the more backlinks from reputable websites, the more trustworthy a page is.

From a law firm’s perspective, link building is one of the key performance indicators for their SEO campaigns. Solicitors across the UK build links to boost their rankings and attract more traffic.

However, it can also be used to build and solidify relationships within the industry, which can support their businesses in other ways.

 

What do backlinks accomplish for law firms?

Backlinks accomplish a range of goals. The obvious benefit of attracting backlinks to your website is bolstering your SEO efforts. According to Search Engine Land, backlinks are one of the top two criteria Google looks at when determining their rankings.

Not all backlinks are equal, though. It’s all about quality over quantity. This is why a backlink from the BBC News website will always outweigh backlinks gained from local UK newspapers.

Besides rising up the Google SERPs, why should your law firm invest in link-building campaigns?

 

Expand Your Reach – Naturally, the higher you rank, the greater your reach. Hit the top three spots, and you’ll get the most traffic from that search term. A more extensive reach means more business.

 

Build Industry Relationships – It’s also a chance to enhance your site’s credibility and forge relationships with others in your line of work.

 

Open Collaboration Opportunities – Every time sites link to each other, a professional relationship is launched. This can result in future collaboration opportunities online and perhaps even in the real world.

 

In short, if you consider online to be an essential channel for attracting clients to your practice, you cannot afford to ignore the role of backlinking in digital marketing.

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Basic link building terms to know

Unfortunately, link building takes time and patience. Approximately 41% of SEO experts agreed that link building was the most challenging part of optimising a business for the web. 

Whether you’re managing your link-building campaign in-house or outsourcing it, it’s important to know specific terms. Here are the top 10 link-building terms with definitions.

Backlink – A link from one website to another.

Anchor Text – The clickable text of a hyperlink.

Link Juice – The value passed to a website through a backlink.

Internal Linking – Links that go to other pages on your website.

NoFollow Link – A link tag that tells a search engine to pass no authority to the page you’re linking to.

DoFollow Link – A link tag that tells a search engine to pass authority to the page you’re linking to.

Link Building Outreach – Connecting to other websites to acquire backlinks, such as through pitching post ideas and networking.

Broken Link Building – Gaining new backlinks by finding broken links on other websites and offering your content as a suitable replacement.

Domain Authority (DA) – Developed by Moz, DA predicts a website’s ranking potential based largely on link profile. The higher your DA, the likelier you are to rank higher.

Natural Link – A backlink acquired organically without any intention on your part.

 

What makes a good backlink?

Most marketers begin by examining the domain authority. According to Aira, 65% of marketers begin their journey by assessing a website’s domain authority to evaluate the quality of a backlink.

However, remember that Google hasn’t developed the “authority” metric. On the other hand, since link-building works, we know that Google definitely evaluates authority, somehow, within its algorithm.

Nevertheless, five factors should be used to evaluate the strength of a potential backlink:

  1. Organic Traffic – Large amounts of organic traffic indicate that Google believes a website to be trustworthy and reliable, making it more valuable.

  2. Relevance – How closely related is the subject website? As a law firm, a link from another law firm is more valuable than one from a cleaning company.

  3. Anchor Text – Anchor text is part of what Google looks at when ranking a page. In short, anchor text should accurately describe the page a link is pointing at.

  4. Placement – Where is the backlink placed? More prominent locations in a piece of content increase the likelihood of users clicking on it, which makes it more valuable in Google’s eyes.

  5. Destination – Obviously, you want to win more business, so a link to your contact or home page is incredibly valuable. The same goes for content-rich pages that can prove your authority and professionalism.

 

Generally, you should aim to get links from websites that already rank highly. Lots of backlinks to no-name websites won’t offer much in the way of value.

 

Link building techniques for law firms

Building backlinks is a time-consuming process, and SEO experts claim that the process is taking longer than before. In fact, 46.4% of SEOs said the process now took one to three months more than it previously did.

Commit to the ongoing process, and you’re likely to get the results you want. Let’s examine some actionable strategies for building backlinks.

Build quality content

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Build the content that people want to link to. Link-worthy content in the legal business is often relevant and newsworthy.

For example, many UK lawyers published content in 2023 about the UK government’s courtroom loss on their Rwanda asylum seeker plan. Obviously, ensure that anything you create relates to your speciality.

Get into legal directories

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While not as powerful as it once was, getting your practice into UK legal directories and claiming your social profiles on sites like Yelp is a great idea.

Some examples of prominent directories to tap include Infolaw, LawFirms.co.uk, and The Law Society.

Invest in guest posting

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Writing content for another site in exchange for a link is a prominent strategy solicitors use for getting backlinks when their online presence is small.

Choosing reputable, high-quality websites is the key to making the most of guest posting. If you’re struggling, consider tapping your professional network for potential guest posting opportunities.

It’s also a great chance to get other industry figures producing content for your site.

Get in the news

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Appearing in your local newspaper for a major case or because you did something noteworthy is an excellent way to build backlinks quickly.

Some law firms with a budget have even launched programs like scholarships or apprenticeships just to get into the local newspaper.

Be a professional resource

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Suppose you don’t have time to build your content, be a resource for someone else. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is one such network that connects experts and reporters worldwide.

In exchange for providing your legal knowledge, you’ll get the chance to have your name and link appear on the publication’s website. HARO regularly attracts big-name websites, including Forbes, so it’s worth doing this.

Other link-building tactics for lawyers

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The above five strategies will enable you to set the foundations for a successful link-building campaign; but, you can employ hundreds of different strategies and ideas to build up your profile.

Here are just some of the other ways to build backlinks:

  • Get interviewed as an expert.
  • Appear on a podcast.
  • Leverage your university connections to produce content in educational settings.
  • Do something newsworthy.
  • Answer questions on Quora.
  • Hire a link-building specialist.

How measure the success of link building for your law firm

How do you know if your link-building campaign has been a success?

Since we don’t have access to the innards of the Google algorithm, measuring link-building success isn’t an exact science. Generally, you can expect to focus on six key metrics, including:

  1. Quality of backlinks
  2. Anchor text optimisation
  3. Quantity of backlinks
  4. Link position
  5. Referral traffic
  6. Return on investment (traffic, clicks, social media interaction, increase in business)

Finally, you can use the same tools to measure your website’s DA to see how your link-building campaign has impacted your business.

However, successful link-building begins and ends with execution. If you demand excellence in execution (and why wouldn’t you?), connect with the brand that increased one law firm’s leads by 174%.


Reach out to us about link-building by contacting our team now!

19/12/2023

Matt Tomkin

Local SEO for Law Firms: The Basic Steps

Finding your insurance brokers target audience

Local SEO has grown, with every type of land-based business taking advantage of it.

Countless statistics illustrate the effectiveness of local SEO and why you should pay attention to it.

For example, “near me” keyword searches have grown 900% in the last two years, and we already know that searchers actively visit the businesses they learn about in this way. So, it makes sense that law firms should also be working on getting in on the act.

Want to know what local SEO for law firms looks like and how to do it? Let’s jump in.

What is local SEO for law firms?

Law firm SEO is working to boost your brand’s website and online presence to acquire more visibility and leads through search engines. You may be doing this by:

Countless other techniques exist for boosting your SEO; but what is local law firm SEO? Essentially, it’s the same thing, but you’re targeting a specific geographic area.

With 40% of smartphone users relying on Google to find out about local solicitors in their area, this isn’t something you can afford to ignore.

Why is ranking in local search results important for law firms?

Running a law firm means you’re likely already snowed under with all the tasks that come with being in the legal profession.

So, why should you worry about ranking in local search results?

Let’s start with the obvious. Approximately 99% of consumers said they used Google to discover local businesses, and those looking for legal help will be looking for a local solicitors practice.

Other than that, more benefits include:

  • Better overall online visibility.

  • Appear before other law firms in your area.

  • Increase your in-office traffic.

  • Tap into the local shopping boom.

  • Gain more targeted web traffic.

All this adds up to more qualified leads that ultimately become paying clients for your law firm. Over time, this will only increase your law firm’s stature, resulting in more work and a bigger bottom line.

In other words, concentrating on your ranking is an investment that pays off every time, over time.

Top 3 listing on Google Maps – Guaranteed


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Local SEO ranking factors

Ranking factors are the areas that SEO experts focus on in terms of getting the most results based on search engine guidelines. In other words, they’re the core battlegrounds your law firm should focus on.

So, what are the key local SEO ranking factors in 2023?

  • Google Business Profile – Formerly known as Google My Business, establishing your profile is vital to building your local presence.

  • On–Page Signals – This includes everything from the page titles you use to your meta descriptions and contact details.

  • Online Reviews – Well-reviewed law firms will consistently rank higher than poorly-reviewed ones. The more positive reviews you have, the more favourably Google will look at you.

  • Local Backlink Profile – Named in your local newspaper or recently won a community award? Google will see the links to these various articles and announcements and factor them into your local rankings. The same goes for online citations.

  • Searcher Proximity – Based on your map location, Google will rank businesses higher based on where the searcher is searching.

  • Searcher Behaviour – Click-through rates and the time a visitor spends on your landing pages will influence your rank.

Countless ranking factors exist, but focusing on the above will usually be enough to enable you to stand head and shoulders above the competition.

Suppose you have a well-optimised site that serves your target audience and a business name respected in the community. In that case, you’re already most of the way towards dominating your local SERPs.

Local SEO on Google

Whenever anyone talks about SEO, what they really mean is Google. Yes, Bing exists, but Google controls 83% of the search engine market, meaning this is where you should focus if you’re looking to improve your local SEO.

What exactly are the elements of local SEO SERPs? Or, what are the critical parts of the page you see when searching for a local business? Remember, 97% of first-page results will contain one or more of the following elements:

  • Featured Snippets at the top of the page.

  • Top and bottom page ads.

  • Video carousels.

  • Rich snippets containing extra information next to specific search results.

  • Site links.

  • ‘People Also Ask’ boxes.

Some elements are more relevant than others. In particular, there are three elements law firms targeting local SEO should look at.

Google Local Pack

Local Packs, also known as the “Map Pack, ” contains three local results for a particular type of business and a prominently displayed map. These are the top three brands as designated by Google.

They also have a separate algorithm that contains many of the elements detailed above, but Local Packs focus more on your Google Business Profile and getting great reviews.


Google Map Optimisation – Find Out More

Screenshot of Google Map Pack
Screenshot of Google Local Service Ads

Local Services Ads

Local Services ads are paid ads that enable local businesses to collect more leads via message requests and phone calls.

These are far more effective for local law firms because they are guaranteed to finish at the top of SERPs.

Google Business Profile (formally Google My Business)

Previously known as Google My Business, your Google Business Profile is integral to your success (or lack thereof) in the local SEO battleground.

Claiming your business enables you to control how your business appears in local SERPs. This is where you can set your law firm’s address, map positioning, opening hours, phone number and more.

With 46% of all Google searches possessing local intent, not having a Google Business Profile is akin to being invisible.

Screenshot of Google Business Profile

Optimising your law firm’s Google Business Profile

Claiming your business and optimising your Google Business Profile isn’t rocket science. In fact, it’s so easy that a solicitor with no SEO experience can do it in just a few minutes.

To begin optimising your Google Business Profile, follow these simple steps:

  • Visit the Google Business Profile website and either claim your law firm’s listing or create it.

  • Ensure the business information you provide is up-to-date and accurate.

  • Craft a business description that sells.

  • Add high-quality images and videos.

  • Collect as many reviews as possible from your clients.

  • Share interesting content with the post feature to improve your discoverability.

  • Leverage the Q&A section to provide helpful information about your legal brand.

Above all, ensure that the information on your Google Business Profile remains relevant and correct. Outdated information will only hurt your SEO footprint.

Or, use our “done for you” Google Business Profile service with Guaranteed top 3 ranking.

Local organic SEO for law firms

Local SEO is a slightly different beast, because whether you show up or not depends on many factors outside your control, such as who’s searching for you and where they’re located. However, hitting all the right local SEO ranking factors will improve your organic traffic, resulting in more leads.

Location pages

Law firms with multiple locations face a problem in ensuring they can individually target different geographical areas without causing any confusion.

For example, if you’ve got offices in Manchester and Liverpool, you don’t want someone from Liverpool clicking on your Manchester office and vice-versa.

Sadly, many businesses get these wrong because they don’t provide unique value and essentially copy-paste what’s already on their websites.

In other words, optimising for each location means making each location page unique so that you’re more likely to rank for each location search. This means creating separate but unique pages for your core areas, like ‘Family Law Solicitors Manchester’.

Local page optimisation

How do you optimise a location page to get the best results? Firstly, you should have a separate map pack and updated information for each location. It also helps to provide detailed information about every office’s service areas, complete with FAQs.

Here are some additional optimisation tips for managing multiple location pages:

  • Don’t duplicate content to save time.

  • Avoid spamming location-based keywords, such as “Best solicitor in Nottingham” or “Nottingham solicitor”. Add where needed (i.e. in your heading), and leave it at that.

  • Follow basic best practices, such as optimising URLs, meta descriptions and images.

  • Write content that’s specific to your location. In other words, what makes your Nottingham office different from your Leicester office?

  • Take original photos of the area.

  • Connect with other businesses local to you and show it.

The big takeaway for local page optimisation is to ensure it’s unique. Treat each location as a distinct business instead of just another part of your legal empire.

Building reviews for your law firm

Positive reviews for your law firm are one of the leading ranking factors in local SEO. Google’s philosophy is always to put the best businesses in the face of searchers to deliver value.

Naturally, a law firm with 500 reviews and an overall rating of 4.7/5 will be interpreted as the superior business compared to a law firm with ten reviews and a rating of 3.9/5.

So, from an SEO perspective, building up your Google reviews must be a priority. Other than providing an excellent legal service, you can generate reviews by:

  • Asking your satisfied clients.

  • Make the process simple, such as by providing a QR code.

  • Educate your clients on how important reviews are to you.

  • Integrate a “Leave a Review” button directly into your website.

Above all, there are no shortcuts to getting reviews. It’s a long-term process. Don’t try to game the system by paying for reviews for a quick SEO boost, as it will only cost you later.

Getting your firm featured in local directories and business listings

Getting your firm featured in local directories, business listings and publications is a primary local SEO ranking factor. It lends authority to your brand and proves you are a reputable staple in your community.

In most cases, this is as simple as searching for said directories and listing websites and either doing it yourself or asking them to feature you.

But like any local SEO strategy, it’s not about taking a single action or focusing on one area. It’s about your law firm’s overall digital marketing strategy, and that’s where Tao Digital comes in.

Our expertise has enabled countless UK law firms to generate more leads and win more business while they focus on serving their clients. To learn more about online success in 2023 and beyond, reach out to us now.

How to Create a Law Firm Content Marketing Strategy


Content is king, and nothing has changed in that respect.

Producing content to rise up Google’s rankings and provide valuable information to your target audience is as old as the Internet itself. Today, 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C have a content marketing strategy, and for a good reason. It works.

Content marketing is a core pillar of successful SEO, and the legal industry is no exception. But, like any form of marketing, you need a strategy, so here’s what you need to know about building one for your law firm.

What is content marketing for law firms?

As an art form, content marketing is a broad topic. Beginners often get confused about what it means and why they’re doing it. This is because content marketing as a concept can apply to various types of initiatives.

All forms of content have one goal: to share valuable content.

This is something that applies to every industry. In one study, 67% of marketers reported that content marketing won them new leads. From the perspective of the legal trade, content marketing can involve sharing content like:

  • Blogs
  • Q&As
  • Case studies
  • Video interviews

The point is not what type of content you have, but what type resonates with your audience. Getting this right opens up a whole new world of possibilities, with 96% of decision-makers saying that content marketing has been effective for their brands.

 

Should law firms invest in content marketing?

If you value gaining new clients via the online realm, content marketing is essential to getting seen. Your website might act as your virtual business card, but valuable digital assets offer a chance for prospective clients to engage with your brand.

Content marketing is a powerful channel for growing your practice when done correctly. Some of the reasons to invest in content marketing include:

  • Content marketing is crucial to bolstering a Law Firm’s SEO.
  • Strong content drives your social media presence.
  • Nailing your strategy can help expand your audience.
  • Content alone can nurture leads without picking up the phone.

Ultimately, the legal industry can benefit from content marketing as much as any other niche in the overarching economy. Today, 77% of lawyers use social media as a tool, so it’s a natural next step to add content marketing.

Does content marketing actually work for the legal industry?

Think that content marketing doesn’t work for legal practices? Think again.

If you have an audience that asks questions, you have a place for content marketing in your overall marketing strategy. The reality is that content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing whilst costing 62% less.

It makes sense economically, and the results speak for themselves. If you’re still unsure whether it works for local solicitors, remember that SEO is universally important. Without content, you stand little chance of seeing any SEO progress.

 

What should a content strategy for a law firm include?

Writing a blog or shooting a video and tossing it onto your website isn’t enough to see results. Unlike Rome, building it and expecting people to come isn’t a viable strategy. Competition is too fierce, and without direction, there are no guarantees you’re even giving your audience what they want.

So, consider your strategy before thinking about what you want to create. Here’s what you should do before launching your content marketing drive:

 

Keyword Research – Keyword research tells you what people are searching for and what your audience is searching for. If people in Manchester are searching for a “judicial separation solicitor”, then it tells you this is a good subject to focus on, and for your area.

 

Competitor Research – Examine your leading competitors. What are they writing about? Which keywords are they using? How are they structuring their content? If it’s working for them, there’s a good chance it will also work for you, but you have to do it better.

 

Budget – Time is money. Whether you outsource or not, every piece of content takes time away from other parts of your business. Defining a content marketing budget early will help you to keep all your ducks in a row.

 

Content Type – Every type of content comes with its own pros and cons. Podcasts can be great for brand-building, but they also take massive amounts of time to produce and promote. Most law firms will start with basic blogs before investing in other content types.

 

Alignment – How will your content align with your brand? Consider matters like tone of voice, style and whether your content accurately depicts what you do.

 

Content Funnel – Building a content funnel is essential for turning casual readers into clients. Divide your content funnel into top, mid and bottom so that you can measure how effective your content is at converting.

 

These strategic aspects spell the beginning of a flourishing content marketing campaign. Every law firm will still have to endure a period of experimentation in the beginning, but once you hit on something good, you’ll be surprised at how effective content marketing can be.

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What type of content should law firms create?

Countless types of content exist. Maybe you’ve dreamed of having the number one legal podcast in the UK. Perhaps you’re looking at becoming a YouTube sensation. Regardless of how you approach content marketing, the only thing that matters is whether that content directly or indirectly results in more business.

So, what type of content is likely to work for your law firm?

Blogs

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Blogs are the core pieces of content available. They’re highly effective at delivering valuable information to your audience. Ultimately, a legal blog should educate the reader.

Service Pages

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Service pages are often used as landing pages in the legal industry. They tell your audience what you can do for them. They’re a place to provide a solution to a problem someone has, via your services.

Case Studies

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Don’t tell people how great you are. Show them. If you were involved in a landmark case that hit the headlines, make a big deal out of it. Writing about your big wins demonstrates to potential clients that you’re a heavy-hitter they can rely on to help them deal with their legal troubles.

Explainer Videos

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The law is complicated. That’s why explainer videos are so effective in the legal industry. Breaking down complex legal concepts isn’t just educational. It’s also an opportunity for you to introduce your staff and promote your brand.

Social Media

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Social media is also a type of content marketing. Due to the casual nature of these platforms, it’s a chance to make your team friendlier and more approachable.

Note that these five options are all great starting points if you’re taking your first steps into content marketing. Try not to do too much at once. A little done well will accomplish far more than casting a wide net.

Best practices for law firms creating content

There’s a misconception that answering the big questions is enough to make your content marketing successful. Whether you like it or not, law firms creating content must always have SEO in mind.

Here are some of the best practices all law firms should follow when generating content.

 

 

Answer questions in your content

Only 8% of search queries are questions, but even if you enter a few random words, Google will respond with question snippets. It underlines the importance of answering questions, so the easiest way to do this is by doing just that.

Sometimes, a big question may require an entire blog all to itself. On other occasions, an easy way to answer questions is to append an FAQ section to a piece of content.

Regardless, every piece of content should answer a question your audience has.

 

Featured snippet optimisation

Featured snippets are your shortcut to the top of Google. These are the answer boxes you see when performing certain types of searches. Approximately 30.9% of featured snippets rank in position one, and 8.6% of clicks go to these snippets.

Let’s get one thing clear. There’s no way to game the featured snippets system. Google decides as to who gets the snippet. You can reduce the time it takes by hitting niche questions your competitors aren’t answering, but higher-quality content always wins the race.

Some tips include:

  • Phrasing a question as “What is”.
  • Answer a question in two to three sentences.
  • Use well-structured headings.
  • Bolding the main section of your answer.

 

Create a content hub

Content hubs are a curated collection of content on a specific subject. It houses all types of content and divides it into a single subject.

The value of creating separate content hubs around your specialist areas is increasing engagement. They act as series that guide your reader through several types of content.

Keeping them on your pages longer and upping your click-through rates signals to Google that you offer great content. It’s also a chance to position your legal brand as an industry authority.

 

Prove your EEAT

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, or EEAT, is Google’s way of fighting against low-quality content, especially AI-generated. You need to figure out how you’ll hit these four points within your content.

Here’s how to do it:

 

Experience – This is proof that you’re not just rewriting someone else’s content. So, in the case of a lawyer, pairing a case study with an article on that case from a local newspaper would hit this point. An author profile including your credentials, whether you wrote or proofread the article, can also help with proving experience.

 

Expertise – Who are you? Using your leading legal superstar as the author would also hit this point because Google will scour the web for information on that person. If they’ve won industry awards, it automatically contributes to the “Expertise” rating.

 

Authoritativeness – This is all about who you are but with a twist. Google will also examine your entire website to see if that authority extends throughout. Content hubs help to build up your topical authority.

 

Trustworthiness – A combination of the previous three. You can’t aim for this one, but consistently producing high-quality content will contribute.

 

SEO optimisation for all content

Hitting all of Google’s best practices for content should be considered a bare minimum for all types of content.

For example, you should include headings, neatly divided sub-sections and meta descriptions for every page. Any good SEO consultant will ensure these basic SEO components are present throughout your website.

 

Updating and refreshing content

Evergreen content, or content that’s as relevant today as it was five years ago, creates a flywheel that keeps people coming to your website. Many brands have less than ten pieces of content that consistently attract new business for years.

However, the legal industry is especially vulnerable to disruption because of changes in the law. You may have written a lengthy guide on data privacy laws, but one change could make all that outdated. Google also takes note of that.

Regularly updating your primary content whenever there are changes can ensure they remain high-performing pieces. This doesn’t just mean changing the information but also updating your keywords and other SEO components.

Obviously, it isn’t practical to keep doing this with all of your content, but it must be mandatory with your best-performing pages.

Let Tao Digital handle your content marketing

Content marketing is one of the key pillars of quality SEO. You handle the expertise and let us handle the content optimisation, distribution and technical SEO tweaks. With an expert SEO consultant by your side, you can ensure that every piece of content is primed for success.

To learn more about what digital marketing can do for your Law Firm, reach out to us and let’s talk today.

 

How SEO and PPC Work Together for Law Firms

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising are like fishing nets, capturing potential clients as they browse the internet, pulling them towards your firm with enticing bait (keywords) and reeling them in with strategic targeting and optimisation.

SEO is like a trawl net, casting a wide radius to catch a large audience. PPC is like a gill net, used to target specific species, targeting specific audience segments for immediate results. With the right combination of SEO and PPC techniques, your firm can have a steady stream of potential clients hooked and ready to convert into loyal clients. 

Want to know how SEO and PPC work together for the legal sector? Let’s dive in.

What is SEO for Law Firms?

Law firm SEO involves enhancing a law firm’s website and digital visibility to achieve a higher position in search engine results. 

This consists of implementing technical, creative and analytical strategies to improve website content and site structure, acquiring reputable backlinks and targeting appropriate keywords related to your firm’s areas of expertise.

An optimised law website ranks higher on search engines like Google, allowing potential clients to find and contact your firm, ultimately leading to increased leads, conversions and revenue. 

What is PPC for Law Firms?

PPC for law firms is a form of online advertising where you pay each time a potential client clicks on your ad. You’ll find PPC on search engine results pages (at the top), social media platforms and other websites. 

With PPC, you target specific keywords and demographics but only pay for the clicks they receive. The ad’s quality and relevance, keyword popularity and your budget determine the cost of each click.

Why SEO and PPC is important for Law Firms

SEO is takes time to produce results with ongoing efforts needed to improve rankings. PPC provides immediate results but costs more money up front – once you stop paying, your website traffic dwindles.

SEO and PPC should be used together because when a law firm ranks highly organically and has paid ads at the top of the page, it is more likely to be seen by potential clients.

For example, a law firm specialising in divorce law can use SEO to optimise its website for keywords like “divorce solicitor” and “child custody lawyer.” It can also use PPC to target ads to reach people who have searched for these keywords on Google.

Speak to us about a SEO and PPC plans today – Let’s get more leads! Contact Us

How SEO strategies work for Law Firms

By consistently implementing these strategies, your law firm can increase its online presence and attract potential clients who are actively searching for your legal expertise:

  • Keyword Research: The first step in SEO is identifying relevant keywords and phrases that potential clients use to search for legal services. These keywords should be strategically incorporated into your website content, meta descriptions and image tags to improve your site’s relevance and visibility.
  • Content Creation: You can create blog posts, articles and other forms of content with specific keywords and structures whilst demonstrating your expertise in your practice area. You can also optimise for local search, so when a potential client types in “Child law Solicitor in Manchester,” for example, your family law website will pop up (for what area/s you operate in).
  • Local SEO: If you want to boost your online presence in location-based searches further, consider implementing local SEO techniques like enhancing your Google Business Profile, creating content specific to your area and gaining mentions on relevant local websites.
  • Mobile Optimization: Your law firm’s website should be optimised for mobile devices. This includes having a responsive design, fast loading times and mobile-friendly content. Why? Over 50% of web traffic comes from mobiles!

  • Link Building: When other websites link to yours, it shows that you are a trusted and authoritative source of information. This establishes credibility in your industry and boosts SERP rankings.

How PPC strategies work for Law Firms

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) strategies utilise targeted advertisements on search engines like Google and Bing, and social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. 

These advertisements are based on relevant keywords and phrases specific to your law firm and its services. When someone searches for a related keyword or phrase, your firm’s ad appears at the top of the search results, labelled as “sponsored content” or “ad.” 

You’re charged a certain amount each time someone clicks on the ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.” PPC strategies also allow you to target specific locations, demographics and behaviours, ensuring your ads reach their desired audience. 

Such a targeted approach attracts potential clients actively searching for legal services who are more likely to be interested in your specific practice areas. 

Another advantage of PPC is the ability to track and analyse ad performance. These metrics help you decide which keywords and demographics drive the most traffic and conversions, allowing them to refine your strategy for maximum impact.

 

Can you use PPC and SEO together?

Yes, PPC and SEO can be used together as part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. These two separate tactics complete each other, ultimately driving more quality traffic and conversions to your website. 

By targeting the same keywords through PPC and SEO, your business increases its chances of appearing in top positions on SERPs, augmenting clicks and conversions.

PPC and SEO data also inform each other’s strategies. For example, PPC data on keyword performance, ad headlines and other factors can help guide SEO efforts. In contrast, SEO data on keyword rankings and website traffic can inform PPC targeting and optimisation.

Does SEO or PPC have a greater ROI for Law Firms?

Generally, SEO has a higher ROI for law firms than PPC because it’s a long-term investment that generates organic traffic to your website for years to come. Once your website is out there, it is discoverable time and again.

On the other hand, PPC is expensive, especially if you’re targeting competitive keywords, and it only lasts as long as you can afford it. However, PPC is a good tactic to attract specific clients immediately. 

Truthfully, it’s a bit of a trick question as you should use both unless budget is an issue, in which case you’ll want to weigh the pros and cons.

The pros and cons of SEO vs PPC for the legal sector

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SEO Pros

  • Long-term investment: Once you start ranking for relevant keywords, you’ll continue getting traffic to your website for years, even if you stop investing in SEO.
  • Builds brand awareness and authority: When your website ranks well in search results, it shows potential clients that you’re a trusted expert.

SEO Cons

  • Takes time: Ranking for competitive keywords can take months or even years.
  • Complex and time-consuming: You’ll need to invest time and resources into creating high-quality content, optimising your website for search engines and building backlinks.
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PPC Pros

  • Generates quick results: You can immediately start seeing results from your PPC campaigns.
  • Highly targeted: You can target your ads to specific audiences and keywords, which means you’re more likely to reach people interested in your services.

PPC Cons

  • PPC is expensive: The cost of PPC ads can vary depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you’re targeting –  sometimes, it can cost hundreds per click.
  • Campaigns must be managed and optimised regularly: You need to monitor your spending and results and adjust your campaigns as needed.

How do you know whether your law firm should invest in SEO and/or PPC?

As a rule of thumb, you should invest in SEO first because its impact lasts longer, and then PPC. However, there are a few circumstantial considerations:

  • Your budget: SEO and PPC can be expensive, but SEO is typically a long-term investment. PPC can generate results more quickly, but you will need to continue to spend money on ads to maintain your visibility.
  • Goals: Do you want to increase brand awareness and generate more leads over time (SEO), or do you need immediate results (PPC)?
  • Competition: If several competitors already have an established online presence, it will take more time to gain traction with SEO alone. In this case, a PPC campaign momentarily levels the playing field.


Let Tao Digital take care of your SEO and PPC

Like expert fishermen skilfully select the perfect net to catch their target, our team is skilled at utilising SEO and PPC to attract potential clients to your firm. We have a case study, featured on the huge SEO platform Moz, about how we increased a Law Firm’s leads by 174%!

Don’t delay – reach out to us now and let us help you bring online success to your law firm.

Digital Marketing Tips for Law Firms

Digital marketing for law firms is one of the fastest and easiest ways for lawyers to grow their business. The more people who discover your law firm, the potential clients you will gain and the more growth your business will experience. So, what are the best digital marketing strategies for law firms to adopt?

Do Law Firms need to invest in digital marketing?

We always suggest that legal firms invest in digital marketing due to the fact it is one of the best ways to promote their legal services and attract new clients. It is also a great way to build brand awareness and establish your firm as a trusted and reliable source.

Digital marketing for law firms includes the use of digital channels and techniques in order to get the results you want to see, whether that’s an increase in leads or higher engagement on your social platforms.

What types of digital marketing strategies are there?

There are few different types of digital marketing strategies that you can use in order to get the results you want. 

Strategies such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Content Marketing heavily focus on improving and optimising your website and how this can organically bring in new clients, as well as retaining old ones. 

Other strategies focus more on how you can drive people from other avenues to your website. For example, PPC, Social Media and Email Marketing are all great ways to get new leads from external sources to your website, not just organically from search result pages. 

Can digital marketing work for the legal industry?

With the right strategy implemented, digital marketing for your law firm can help to increase website traffic, generate new leads and ultimately drive your business to be one of the top ranking sites on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). 

However, it is important to remember that these results won’t be instantaneous and will depend on several factors, such as:

  • The target audience
  • Your competitors
  • The quality of your marketing efforts
  • The standard of your site to begin with

Kickstart your Digital Journey

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Digital marketing strategies for law firms

There are several different digital strategies that can be implemented to promote your legal services:

 

Website Auditing and Optimisation

As a law firm, it is vital you have a formidable website to stand out against your competitors, especially since so much of your business will come from local clients. Your website serves as the foundation for most of your digital marketing efforts and it’s where you will provide key information about your services, as well as high quality blogs for your current and prospective clients. 

Part of having an optimised website is ensuring that it is centred around user experience (UX). This will not only take into account the needs, values and limitations of your users, but the goals and objectives of your business. Your website should be easy to navigate, accessible to all users, useful and credible. 

These values also need to be carried across to your mobile site. Some of the basics to make your site more mobile friendly include:

  • Making your site adaptive to any device such as mobile, laptop, tablet and so on
  • Always use responsive design for assets like images 
  • Use shorter meta titles since they are easier to read on mobile
  • Avoid pop-ups that cover content and cause visitors to leave the site

Consider where and when long-form content is appropriate. 

SEO

SEO is the process of optimising your content and your site in order to achieve higher rankings in SERPs. Ultimately, implementing an SEO strategy for your law firm will bring in the right visitors organically to drive more leads and sales.  

It involves a variety of different tactics, such as:

  • Fixing and monitoring technical issues
  • Implementing core SEO features like title tags, meta descriptions and schema
  • Working on Core Web Vitals
  • Creating high-quality content 
  • Optimising content around specific keywords

Targeting local keywords will help you to show up for relevant searches made by prospects in your area. Using these keywords will increase your visibility and the potential of attracting new clients.

Optimising individual pages can help make them easier for search engines to read, which allows you to compete with other local law firms. Optimisation includes a variety of different factors including images, text, video, schema, HTML tags and so on. 

Using the above techniques will help your site to rank higher on SERPs, which in turn allows you to build brand awareness and trust from your visitors. They will be more inclined to purchase your services than they would if you didn’t have a great web presence. 

Our SEO tips for Law Firms goes into more detail on how this all works.

Email Marketing

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Email marketing involves sending promotional and information emails to build relationships with your audience, win over prospects and turn one-time buyers into repeat customers. Emails can include a variety of different content from new services, promoted website content or general messages on behalf of your business.

Law firms can tap into this market by asking users to subscribe on their website, dedicating a specific webpage that asks for their email and even giving away something free, such as an ebook or a PDF, in exchange for their email address. 

Emails are a great way to promote traffic to your website, as the emails you send to your subscribers should contain links to pages. A good way to determine the success of your emails is through key performance indicators, such as open-rate and click-through rate. 

Compared to other marketing strategies, email marketing is usually quite cost-effective, which is great for new law firms starting up.

Social Media

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Social media marketing utilises social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. You may use social media marketing techniques if you want to:

  • Promote your content and services
  • Build brand awareness and visibility
  • Gain more followers
  • Engage with current and prospective customers
  • Drive traffic to your website 
  • Tap into a different audience

Using social media for marketing is a relatively low budget, but it does require ongoing advertising spending and most of the time, you will need a landing page designed specifically for users from that spend. 

Social media is, however, a great place to achieve audience engagement. Choosing the right channels, doing research on how the platforms work and creating useful and interesting content is a tried and tested way for many in achieving a social presence.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is based on answering people’s questions and really helping them through the content, rather than interrupting them with promotions about your business. It can include content such as blog posts, landing pages, white papers, ebooks, case studies and much more.

In most cases, content marketing is used to:

  • Put content in front of prospective clients when searching
  • Improve brand awareness and online authority
  • Improve brand loyalty 
  • Educate your target audience 
  • Convert and keep leads

In order to do the above, a great strategy to include is by creating what is known as a “content hub”, which is a curated collection of content on a specific topic or subject. You can then fill your resource hub with a combination of informative and useful pieces of content which utilise your key terms and common industry queries. 

Not only is this a great way to contend with your competitors, but it also increases your brand visibility online and therefore, generates organic traffic through your content showing up on SERPs. 

Content marketing also goes hand-in-hand with SEO. This means that if you have high-quality content, it will significantly improve your website’s SEO, so you can enjoy more organic website traffic that will turn visitors into buyers.

Google Business Profile and Reviews

Google Business Profile is a section about your business that appears on the side of Google’s SERP.  It will appear when someone searches for you or your business in their area. 

It is essentially a brief overview of your business, including:

  • Your business name and address
  • Primary and secondary categories (the services you offer)
  • Photos of the team, business, service offering
  • Location on Google Maps
  • Opening hours and contact details 
  • Website
  • Reviews 

Having a Google Business Profile (GBP) can particularly help with local SEO. Ensuring your information is up to date and well optimised is highly likely to be a ranking factor that can help Google to understand your business offerings. 

Every business should have a GBP as it helps potential clients find your business. For example, if someone locally searches “law firms near me” into Google, you will appear based on the location you have listed. These clients may have never found your business otherwise. 

PPC Advertising 

Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is a strategy in which you pay every time a user clicks on one of your online ads. It is most commonly done through Google Ads and it is an effective way to reach people who are searching for terms related to your business. Implementing a PPC campaign will likely be used to help increase your sales or leads. 

Costs can vary quite drastically, from relatively inexpensive to thousands of pounds per month, depending on the size of your campaign. When campaigns are discontinued, the traffic generated by that campaign is also discontinued. 

When users click on PPC ads, they are directed to a landing page that encourages them to take a certain action. Either:

  • Make a purchase
  • Complete a form 
  • Download a report, or something similar. 

PPC campaigns are really easy to track, especially with platforms like Google Ads. You’ll be able to track how many people view your ads as well as how many click on them and what percentage of them convert. 

Which digital marketing strategy is best for your law firm?

There is no single strategy that will work best for all law firms. Even within the same industry, online and search marketing strategies will need to be tailored to your individual business.

The first step in any digital marketing journey should be a website audit. These audits allow you to gain a better understanding of the position that your site is, in order to plan the most effective next steps.

By working with an SEO agency, you’ll be able to discover and discuss:

  • Your goals, needs and current strategy
  • Your competitors and the industry
  • How your site is currently performing
  • Whether your site has any issues
  • What digital marketing channels would work best for your firm, and why

To get started, we just need a few details about your business and chat about where you want to go. Contact the team today.

Increase Leads for your Law Firm Chat to the team

SEO Tips for Law Firms

In the age of searching for services online, it is important that you find a way for your law firm business to stand out amongst the rest. Using SEO techniques can significantly help you to outrank your competitors, increase traffic to your site and generate new leads.

How does SEO work for the legal industry?

A big issue within the legal industry is figuring out how to get your business in front of potential clients. Fortunately, SEO for your law firm can be the driving force to an increase in leads.

Although there is no foolproof method behind SEO in the legal industry, there are a variety of different ways to improve your chances of ranking on page one of a search engine.

Through the use of specific keywords, dedicated blogs and geographically based content, you are much more likely to appear in the search results when people start to look for law firms in their area. The higher your site ranks on a search results page, the more likely a user is to click on your site and use your services.

Is SEO important for solicitors?

Yes, SEO is absolutely one of the most important factors for solicitors to get their business out to new prospects. If you’re a solicitor looking to grow your business, organic search traffic may be a significant marketing channel that you’re overlooking. 

Optimising your website for better visibility and rankings in search engines can increase traffic to your site, leading to higher conversion rates.

Get Your Law Firm More Organic Leads

Get Your Law Firm More Organic Leads

4 SEO tips for law firms

Your website is the foundation of a successful SEO strategy.
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Implement keywords 

Keyword research and implementation is one of the most effective ways to organically increase your leads. Keyword research involves using professional tools and strategies to discover what people are searching and how you can use this to your advantage to attract them to your site. 

Your ideal keywords will range from highly searched, significant industry terms to long-tail, low searched terms that capitalise on a small audience to aid in conversion. 

Keywords shouldn’t be too general, as it will become increasingly difficult to rank for them – for example, the simple term of ‘family law solicitor’ is searched 4.6k times per month in the UK (Correct on Ahrefs as of August 2023). Perhaps, instead of initially trying to rank for the term “family law solicitor”, you could aim to rank for “family law solicitors Bolton”.

 

Search Intent

You will also want to rank for keywords/queries whereby you understand a clear search intent behind them. These are often queries which include words and phrases such as “why”, “how” and “can I”, as people are seeking to have questions answered.

The most common search types are:

  • Informational
  • Commercial
  • Navigational
  • Transactional


This means that your on-site content must match the intent of a search. For example, if you want to talk about how your Family Law firm supports people when choosing Grounds for Divorce, you may think about creating a page to showcase this service.

However, if you analyse what’s currently ranking for key terms and searches around ‘grounds for divorce’, the results are mostly blog posts. This would suggest that the search intent is informational, and you should create articles around the main topic: ‘What are the Grounds for Divorce?’.

This will then likely break down into more questions and more niche blog posts, such as ‘What Does Irretrievable Breakdown Mean in Grounds for Divorce?’. These types of content help to increase your online authority, showcasing your firm as knowledgeable in all areas and having answers to all questions surrounding one topic.

 

On-Page Optimization 

To fully optimise your content for keywords it’s important, that they are used in the following areas on a page:

  • Title tag
  • Meta Description tag
  • Heading 1 and subheadings 
  • Throughout the blog content (where relevant – never keyword stuff)
  • More often than not, the URL
Technical SEO
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Technical SEO can make or break your law firm’s SEO performance, making it a major factor to your success. 

In basic terms, technical SEO is how “google-friendly” your website is, which in turn means ‘user-friendly’ as Google prioritises users first. Since this can get very complicated, it’s best to consult an SEO agency who specialises in law firm SEO. However, there are some things you can keep in mind with technical SEO.

 

Make sure your website is user friendly 

There are two basics to ensure your site is user friendly:

  • Pages load fast, ideally under 2.5 seconds
  • Pages render well across screens, for both desktops and mobile

One of the quickest ways to reduce page load times is using a better hosting provider, we recommend Kinsta as they’re just the best there is. We’ve written a full review that you can read here, Kinsta Hosting Review

Make sure your site is easy to navigate 

It’s important that your website has simple and easy to navigate menus and links, so users can easily find all of your pages and understand what each page is about. 

Google is quite transparent about things you can do to improve your law firm’s technical SEO, and you can familiarise yourself by viewing the Webmaster Guidelines (now called Google Search Essentials).

Backlink and off-page citations
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Having great content and a Google friendly site is one thing, but having backlinks and off-page citations can help to boost your presence even more. 

For SEO, backlinks work somewhat like a popularity contest. If a law firm website gets a lot of backlinks from other high profile sites, they essentially receive backing that the content on their site is correct and reliable.

 

Increase local SEO through off-page citations

The contact information of your law firm shows up in all kinds of places online, making it both visible to search engines and potential clients. That’s why the best way to gain more visibility from local SEO is to obtain backlinks from places where your business is displayed. 

Some examples of where you can get off-page citations to improve your local SEO include:

  • Legal directories
  • Local directories, including your Google Business profile
  • Social profiles 
  • Reviews and endorsement websites

Collect positive client reviews 

Part of a successful law firm SEO strategy is generating more positive reviews. These reviews show users that your law firm can be trusted and will provide high-quality services. 

If you have more positive reviews than your competitors, this may lead you to outrank them. As well as this, users will be more likely to choose your firm over others which have little to no reviews.

There are many easy ways in which you can increase your positive reviews. This could be by using a new review platform that offers more support than just Google reviews, or you could utilise email marketing to encourage new and existing clients in your database to leave reviews.

What benefits will SEO have for law firms?

The benefits of SEO for law firms are huge. Beyond increasing a law firm’s ranking on a search result page, SEO works to bring in more traffic which is likely to convert to leads. 

Other benefits of SEO for law firms include:

  • Outranking local competition
  • Generating new traffic 
  • Collecting more client reviews 
  • Solidifying their law firm as a reputable authority 

SEO is a long term strategy, and it needs time to work. Many Law Firms struggle with in-house capacity for well-researched and search-focused content production, local SEO implementation, technical SEO maintenance and an ongoing link strategy. 

Consulting with an SEO agency for one or all of the above allows you to focus on your internal goals and keeping clients satisfied. Consistent investment and trust in SEO allows leads to flow in at the pace you want.

Speak with one of our team today about kick starting SEO for your law firm.

Speak to one of our team today Contact Us

7 Reasons Why you Need an SEO Audit for your Site

Regularly reviewing your search engine optimisation (SEO) plans will help you to ensure that your website is optimised for search engines. Running an SEO audit is an essential part of keeping your SEO strategy up to date, which will eventually increase the traffic to your website.

What is an SEO audit for a website?

An SEO Audit is the process of outlining and analysing potential problems or faults that will have an impact on your site’s organic performance. These errors can potentially prevent your site from ranking highly on search engines like Google and Bing.

What kinds of websites need an SEO audit?

All websites can benefit from an SEO audit due to the fact that it provides vital insights into your website, identifying areas which need improvement so you can rank better in organic search results.

Search engines and algorithms can change on a regular basis, so it’s always good practice to review your website regularly and determine how those changes have impacted your site.

7 reasons why your site needs an SEO audit

Monitoring your competition

Having an understanding of your competition is always important for your business, especially if they are ranking above you on search engines.

SEO audits are a great way to obtain insights into your competitors’ websites, including their strengths and weaknesses. You can get insights on their rankings, determining what keywords they’re using and which specific ones they’re ranking for.

From here, you can see if it’s possible to implement the same keywords into your own SEO strategy.

You can also focus on the keywords that aren’t ranking well for your competitor and boost your rankings for these instead.

Keywords

Continuing with keywords, they are one of the best ways to see if your SEO strategy is working. Regular SEO audits will provide you with insights about your websites overall performance, and you can particularly focus on what keywords you rank for and how you rank for them.

Using SEO analysis, you can regularly update your website based on the performance of your keyword rankings and assess the progress of those updates.

Mobile optimisation and website loading time

Google uses mobile-first indexing on all of its websites, meaning that the mobile version of your site is reviewed first before your desktop site. Google then ranks your site based on how well your site performs on mobile devices. When it comes to your site’s loading time, Google also ranks based on a fast loading time.

An SEO Audit allows you to uncover these issues, allowing you to change elements of your site to ensure you have a faster loading time and a more mobile friendly site.

Broken pages

Conducting an SEO Audit allows you to diagnose the status of your website. You will be able to see if you have any broken links, redirects or any pages that cannot be found. It will also showcase any issues that are reducing your site’s traffic.

These problems can quickly be identified and resolved with an SEO audit.

Website traffic insights

With a full, in-depth SEO audit using tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can find out about your search volume, clicks and impressions that your site is generating on search pages.

An increase in clicks and impressions is always a good sign that your SEO strategy is working. Just be sure to regularly monitor this data so you can be aware of any changes in traffic.

Identify on-page issues

On-page SEO refers to any optimisation of a website content and structure to improve its rankings on search engine results pages. On-page SEO aims to make it as easy as possible for crawling bots to understand what a website is about and index the content accordingly.

Using an SEO audit for on-page issues allows you to check for errors in meta titles and descriptions, headers, content and internal linking. These are annoying problems that you may not notice without the help of an SEO audit.

Helps you build a content strategy

An SEO audit can help you better understand your website’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your competitors. Using this information, you can develop a content strategy that is more effective and will help you achieve high rankings.

SEO audits can also help you identify opportunities to create unique content that will attract backlinks and improve your site’s overall authority.